shac7 and electronic civil disobedience
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 The shac 7 case is very alarming. From what I've gathered, these people are facing serious prison time for operating websites that promote direct action against a corporation that does testing on animals. I wonder when we'll be facing jail time for linking to "digitally incorrect" websites, like sherman austin did. "Specifically, these activists are alleged to have operated a website that reported on and expressed ideological support for protest activity against Huntingdon and its business affiliates. For this they are charged with "terrorism" and face an aggregate of 23 years in Federal Prison The highlight of the week is when the government called a 20 year old activist from Ohio who was "caught" participating in an electronic civil disobedience (ECD) (the act of visiting a website with special software designed to overflow a server's bandwidth and effectively crash the site) and who sent black faxes. Undoubtedly, the government expected him to testify that SHAC USA and/or its website caused him to do these things. Instead, he repeatedly said he learned about it from other places, participated in the actions on his own freewill, and none of the defendants had anything to do with his actions. When asked why he had sent the black faxes, he said that he was angry after watching the undercover footage at HLS where workers are hurting beagles." http://www.shac7.com - -- encrypted mail preferred // gpg key id 0x250E12BF gpg howto: http://dudu.dyn.2-h.org/nist/gpg-enigmail-howto // blog: http://deleteTheBorder.org/lotu5 radio Antifascista podcast: http://deletetheborder.org/node/543 // http://sdhacklab.org http://deleteTheBorder.org || http://organiccollective.org http://sandiego.indymedia.org || http://radioActiveradio.org -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (Darwin) Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFD+7wmNyP5liUOEr8RAh+aAJ4rwZ7RGAB1ZmPewV9T1tu9BqUR7wCbBDZi nEwobAb5zJhzKwkEZCYgC3Y= =95gB -END PGP SIGNATURE- # distributed via : no commercial use without permission # is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net
Re: Netbase (1995-2006)
I would just like to thank all the people who founded, worked at and closely collaborated with the former Public Netbase, for having created and maintained one of the most advanced centers for internet experimentation, intellectual inquiry, activism and art tout court. In my experience this was consistently the most interesting place of its kind, where it was always possible to have a discussion that took you beyond what you knew or had done, and into the deeper reality of the present. It was also the most irreverent place imaginable, one of the few public institutions that could claim to have a sense of humor and that took intelligent delight in proving it over and over again. That such an operation should be treated as the establishment has traditionally treated the avant-garde - by fearing and despising it, or just by torpidly ignoring its qualities and allowing it to disappear for want of the most minimal support - is a sad commentary on the degree of conformism that still prevails in our decaying societies. once again, thanks to all, Brian # distributed via : no commercial use without permission # is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net
The Tlaxcala Manifesto (Translators' Network for Linguistic Diversity)
TLAXCALA'S MANIFESTO by the Translators of Tlaxcala Las lenguas de Tlaxcala, por Juan Kalvellido Tlaxcala, the network for linguistic diversity, was founded on December 2005 by a small group of cyberactivists who knew one another through Internet and discovered that they shared common interests, common dreams and common problems. The network quickly grew, has today [...] members, and translates into [...] languages. This Manifesto, approved by them all, expresses their common philosophy: All languages of the world must, and do contribute to the brotherhood of mankind. Contrary to what many people used to believe, a language is not only a grammatical structure, a set of interconnected words, in agreementwith a syntactic code, but also, and especially, a creation of meaning based upon our senses. Thus we observe, interpret and express our world from a specific personal, geographical and political context. Because of this, no language is neutral, and they all carry the 'genetic code', the imprint of the cultures to which they belong. Latin, the first imperial language, reached its high point by trampling on the remains of the languages it destroyed as the Roman legions extended their presence to the south of Europe, the north of Africa and the Middle East. It is not strange if at the beginning of the Renaissance it was the Spanish language, a genetic daughter of Latin, which brought about new devastation, this time among the conquered peoples of the American continent. An empire and its language always go together and are predators by definition. They reject otherness. Any imperial language constitutes itself as the subject of History, narrates it from its point of view and annihilates (or tries to do so) the points of view of languages it considers inferior. The official History of any empire is never innocent,but motivated by the zeal to justify yesterday.s acts today in order to project its own version upon tomorrow. Nobody knows what suffering the peoples conquered by the Roman Empire endured, since there is no written record of their defeat, which meant the disappearance of their cultures. Conversely, the languages of the American continent conquered by the Spanish Empire left their testimony. Towards the second half of the 16th Century, shortly after the conquest of Mexico, Brother Bernardino de Sahag=FAn assembled what it is known today as The Florentine Codex, a mixture of N=E1hua tales (N=E1huatl is the language of the most ancient Aztecs, still spoken in Mexico) and pictorial illustrations that describe pre-Hispanic society and culture. The second testimony, which contradicts the first one, is The Lienzo de Tlaxcala, also transcribed during the 16th Century by the mixed race Diego Mu=F1oz de Camargo, who based his story upon the fresco paintings by his ancestors .the Tlaxcaltecan nobility . who described in images both Hern=E1n Cort=E9s.s arrival and the fall of Tenochtitlan, the capital of the Aztec Empire, destroyed by the Conquistadors who replaced it with the city of Mexico. Tlaxcala was at the time the Tenochtitlan Aztec empire.s rival city-stateand aided Cort=E9s in destroying it, an attitude that was akin to drawingup its own death sentence, since the new Spanish Empire which was born of that defeat subjugated all the native, so-called pre-Columbian peoples . whether they were allies or enemies of the Spanish Crown, resulting in analmost complete loss of their cultures and languages. In our days, the imperial power is based in the United States of America,whose official language is English. Faithful to the behavioural characteristics of any empire, the English language now imposes its law. Under the influence of English, entire countries or territories have lost- or are in the process of losing - their communicational languages. The Philippines or Puerto Rico are only two examples among many. In sub-Saharan Africa the false prestige accorded to English, French, Portuguese or majority vernacular languages is killing one local mother tongue every two weeks according to UNESCO. It is true that in these times of global communication there is nothing negative in having a lingua franca to facilitate mutual knowledge, but itbecomes quite negative if it either consciously or unconsciously transmits the ideology of superiority that characterizes it, and does so by exhibiting its scorn for the 'subordinate' languages, i.e., all the others. The superiority complex which always accompanies an imperial or imperially-dependent language is so consubstantial to its essence that today it even happens among Anglophone activists engaged in the struggle for a better world: their media is a tangible proof that the writings they publish translated from the 'subordinate' languages constitute only an insignificant percentage of their contents. It is not only the fact that translations from English into other languages are so appallingly numerous in comparison, bu
Citizen Lab releases Psiphon
Hi, has anyone tried this one out yet? I wonder how many nettimers keep track what Citizenlab is doing and if you are, like me, also promoting things like www.ngoinabox.org. /geert --- OLIVER MOORE Toronto Globe & Mail Monday, February 13, 2006 TORONTO -- More than fifteen years after the Berlin Wall was shattered with hammers and bulldozers, a Canadian-designed computer program is preparing to break through what activists call the great firewall of China. The program, in the late stages of development in a University of Toronto office, is designed to help those trapped behind the blocking and filtering systems set up by restrictive governments. If successful, it will equip volunteers in more open countries to help those on the other side of digital barriers, allowing a free flow of information and news into and out of even the most closed societies. The program is part of a quiet war over freedom of information. Even as countries considered repressive, such as China, North Korea, Iran and Saudi Arabia, pour money into stopping the free exchange of data, small groups of activists keep looking for ways around the technological barriers. At the University of Toronto, in the small basement office of Citizen Lab, researchers are getting ready for the release of Psiphon, the latest weapon in the fight. "I was always interested in the idea of using computers for social and political change," said Nart Villeneuve, who has been dabbling with the project for about two years. "It was a matter of creating a program for really non-technical people that was easy and effective." Psiphon is designed to eliminate a drawback of anti-filter programs: incriminating the users behind the firewall. If found by authorities, that anti-filter software can lead to coercive interrogation, a bid to uncover the suspect's Internet travel secrets using a tactic known to insiders as "rubber-hose cryptoanalysis." Mr. Villeneuve built a system that won't leave dangerous footprints on computers. In simple terms, it works by giving monitored computer users a way to send an encrypted request for information to a computer located in a secure country. That computer finds the information and sends it back, also encrypted. An elegant wrinkle is that the data will enter users' machines through computer port 443. Relied on for the secure transfer of data, this port is the one through whichreams of financial data stream constantly around the world. "Unless a country wanted to cut off all connections for any financial transactions they wouldn't be able to cut off these transmissions," said Professor Ronald Deibert, the director of Citizen Lab. A drawback to Psiphon is that the person behind the firewall has to be given a user name and password by the person offering up the computer. With this kind of setup, Mr. Villeneuve said, activists may end up working with specific dissidents and people in repressive countries may rely on relatives abroad to help them get connected. Canadians, with ties to every country in the world, are in a particularly good position to use such a system. Although this reduces the program's reach, a relationship-based system could also minimize improper use. People who know the owner of their proxy computer are less likely to abuse their system, the logic goes. "The big novel thing here is that you have a one-to-one connection," said Danny O'Brien, activism co-ordinator at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco-based group. "That's a great innovation, because so many people have computers that are always on, and this lets you deal with someone you can trust." If the remote user begins to view illegal material, their access can be limited in several ways, such as allowing access to text only. In extreme cases, Mr. Villeneuve said, people found with evidence of illegal activity on their computer would be able to prove through forensic analysis that it had been done by the remote user. The team at Citizen Lab is now racing to put the final touches on the program in time for its public debut at the international congress of the free-speech group PEN in May. Billed as a uniquely Canadian approach to "hactivism," the first generation of Psiphon will then be made publicly available. Its release is set to come against a backdrop of ever-diminishing free access to the Internet. Just last month the popular search engine Google agreed to self-censor, restricting access to certain content and websites in order to gain access to the Chinese market. Sharon Hom, executive director of Human Rights in China, an international NGO, said the country has managed to create "a culture of fear and self-censorship." They are helped, she added, by Western countries willing to sell Internet-monitoring equipment to Beijing and bend to its terms. Mr. O'Brien noted that public knowledge of monitoring can have as major an effect as the surveillance itself. "You don't
